i was driving along and out of nowhere all my gauges just stopped working (went off as if car was not running).

i checked the 10A Meter fuse and that was blown. i replaced it and that blew again right away.
so i have a wiring fault somewhere...great.

where do i start troubleshooting?

 

oh, i should mention that i have a wiring fault with the cruise control also (the CC computer gives the error code for wiring/ground problem). this might be related.

 

do any tranny or clutch work recently???

 

Yes - the cruise control gets power from both the meter & brake fuses.

I'd start by pulling the connector from the cruise control brain box.
It's by the driver's left ankle, just above the CPU.

 

not really. i changed my shifter to a short shifter. would that cause an issue? you are refering to the tranny switches?

ok, so just pull it and see replace the fuse again and see if it blows? or are you saying to inspect it somehow?

thanks for the replys guys.

 

Yeah, its pretty common if the tranny gets dropped for mechanics that don't know what is happening to rip the reverse lights wires, which are powered by the Meter fuse.

 

hmm...well when i put in the short shifter i just was working with the shifter housing (taking boot off, replacing shifter lever, bushings, etc). i don't see how that would screw up those wires.

how could i check if those wires are ok? i'm not quire sure where to look for them...can i test with a multimeter somehow?

 

ok, well in typical FC fashion, i went today to disconnect the cruise control computer harness, and before i did that i decided to put another 10A fuse in and see if the problem was still there. and it WASN'T, the gauges are working again. well then. so just a few notes:

- the day this happened (gauges died) i had been driving around all day in the rain...possibly an exposed wire that shorted because of the water somehow? that would imply an external wire...

- taking off the plastic panel and accessing the CC computer area maybe i jostled some wires that were the problem?

- my cruise control hadn't been working for awhile before this (it kept giving me the "wiring fault" error code)

- for some reason my horn had stopped working a week before this happened. and for some reason again, it has started working.

- since i got the car, my stock radio has always not been able to keep memory. if i leave the car off for more than an hour, the radio presets, for example, are lost.

- the daytime running light functionality stopped working sometime last year, so i had to rewire the foglights to bypass that.


anyways, this is really frustrating because there is some wiring problem in my car somewhere. i have no clue where to start to find it since problems are usually intermittent. i have checked all the major grounds and they seem fine, but maybe i have to actually rewire them.